“Wild Rose”
Written by Sharon Butala
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$21.95 ISBN 9-781550-506365
After completing Sharon Butala’s epic new novel Wild Rose, I closed the book and thought: This is why she’s on CanLit’s “A” list. If you’re in the mood for
getting completely swept up in a female pioneer’s adventure–and this means
fully empathizing with the young Québécois
idealist, Sophie, as she sets out in 1884 for the West and the freedom it
signifies–then buckle up, because Butala assuredly leads readers back in time
to a landscape where “the sun [pours] itself over everything: horses, the hats
of the men, the few women’s entangling skirts, the children’s round eager
faces, the …already weathered false-fronted buildings, piles of all kinds of
goods on the ground from walking plows to stained sacks … to the teams of
horses, the train itself …”.
Butala has a masterly way with landscape, making it, too, feel like a
character you enjoy spending time with. Given her many years of living on the
Prairies-plus the fine craft she’s already demonstrated with sixteen
highly-revered titles, including GG-nominated fiction and nonfiction-she comes
by this gift honestly. This is a writer who’s experienced “a yellow wildflower
quivering under the weight of a bee” and looked out to see “only grass and more
grass, hills and more low, softly sloping hills repeating themselves until they
reached the far, light-filled, wavering horizon.” I assume there were winters
when she, like her realistic protagonist, felt that people “were nothing out
here in the West … barely human beings here, just helpless animals in thrall to
the unimaginable, implacable force that nature was showing itself to be.”
Yes, the three big players in effective fiction - character, plot and
setting – each get full marks in this cinematic book, set in “tiny,
unprosperous Bone Pile,” but it’s Sophie’s rich interior life – the questioning
of her Roman Catholic faith, her family, and what it is to be a woman; the
reckoning with her unimagined challenges (including the shame of having her
husband leave her, penniless and with a child); and the self-actualization she
achieves in the story’s conclusion–that elevate this novel and should have it
earning awards.
Butala’s capture of how an immigrant might feel upon arriving in a new
land and culture – without language skills – seems both topical and, again, experienced. Sophie has the added
challenge of coming from a privileged family–she was raised with a cook and housekeeper
in the home–and thus has much to prove on the unforgiving prairie homestead,
desperately breaking clumps of soil and carrying pails of water a mile so she
might grow vegetables; and later, devising how she’ll provide for herself and
her son after her husband abandons them.
The distinct chapters, reeled out between past and present, offer clues
to how forward-thinking Sophie came to make the choices she did, and the last
paragraph is so fittingly wrought I cannot imagine it any other way.
Wild Rose is a fully-realized
and gloriously wild ride of a novel. It is a triumph, in every way.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
______
“Lessons from a Nude Man”
Written by Donna Besel
Published by Hagios Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$18.95 ISBN 9-781926-710303
“I hadn’t seen a penis in ten
years.” So begins the first and title story in Donna Besel’s diverse collection,
deliciously titled Lessons from a Nude
Man. The Manitoba author, who previously published many stories in the
respected literary journal Prairie Fire, identifies
as a “boreal writer,” and indeed several stories make reference to activities
and items only those who’ve experienced boreal \ northern climes might be
familiar with, ie: the danger of hitting moose on the highway, or slipping into
Sorrel boots when the temperature drops into danger zones. My hometown is
Meadow Lake, SK; I can relate, but I also recommend this book to anyone who enjoys well-written and
entertaining stories, regardless of where they call home.
The crown jewel (pardon the pun) here is the title story. It had me
laughing aloud, and I can imagine this tale being a huge crowd-pleaser at
public readings. A 50-something woman supplements her widow’s pension by
operating a B and B from her rural home, and in her online listing she’s
included that she welcomes “alternatives.” She had “intended to solicit gays,
artists, organic food-eaters, pagans,” and what she got was Roland, from
Yorkton, who wants to inspect the property for a prospective week-long stay
with his “group”. A few minutes after he arrives he says: “Can I take off my
pants? So you can get a sense of it …” He then “shucked off his jeans and
launched into an explanation of naturist philosophy.”
The hilarity in this story-and others in the book, including “Hawksley
Workman and the Worst Motel in Canada,” seems entirely natural, not forced. One
would think that comedy is Besel’s oeuvre, but she’s equally adept at revealing
life’s darker side. Stories concerning physical and sexual abuse in the
nine-story collection are juxtaposed against stories about teaching Hutterite
children, and a woman’s summer spent as a carpenter’s helper: “I remember the
smell of marijuana, the echoing rumble of dynamite, the heavy Mennonite
lunches, and the long hours we spent pounding on unyielding cement.”
In “Fare Well,” where we find an abused woman crying in bed, her face
buried in the sheets, the author writes: “Her head bobbed into the thin
material-silent, but violent movements, like a swimmer breast-stroking into the
waves.” This is strong writing. In the same story the protagonist is “booted
face-down into half-frozen compost. By a stupid deer.”
The first-time author takes readers on various road trips, and her
evocations of a changing world are bang on. A character states how at one time
Ontario resorts “might have catered to weekend anglers and families who liked
dinky cabins or trailer villages. But these tourists had disappeared. The new
ones wanted hot tubs, hot showers, hot bars, water slides and zip lines.” True
thing.
This work is fresh and exciting, and I can’t wait to read the “Motel
Hell” (my words) story to a friend; Besel’s account of a family staying in the
“Worst Motel in Canada” are alone worth buying this book for.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
_____
“The Other Place”
Written by Regine Haensel
Published by Serimuse Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$12.00 ISBN 978-603-8919-58-3
Regine Haensel’s first collection
of stories, The Other Place, is so
easy to read, one need only invest a few hours, yet the compelling linked
stories and their credible protagonist – Greta, a young German immigrant – remain
with the reader in the way one can still feel the warmth after a good friend
has been to visit.
Firstly, the book is physically
enjoyable to read. The double-spaced lines are literally easy to see, and the paper
used is noticeably whiter than in most books, so the black print stands out.
This is rare and especially welcome. The attractive cover features
multi-coloured circles (slightly reminiscent of a Spirograph design) against a
lime green background, and offers no clue – not a bad thing! – as to what’s
inside: nine stories about introspective Greta’s often difficult assimilation
into a small prairie community. In her words, she “Wanted to get good at
forgetting sad things.”
I believe Saskatoon-based Haensel has drawn deeply from her own personal
experience, as a quick internet search reveals that she was born in Germany and
moved to Canada in the 1950’s. Her work’s been recognized with several
Saskatchewan literary awards, magazine and anthology publications, and CBC
broadcasts: in short, she writes exceedingly well. Indeed, it would seem that
as a child the author was taking notes on her experience, for these stories deliver
images and events so convincingly they ring of memory.
In this excerpt from “Goldenrod,” eight-year-old Greta is discovering
her new rural landscape: “Land rushed away to meet sky, blue and dusty green
undulating together in the distance, surging back, wind whipping my dress, then
gone. Stillness like listening, like waiting.” This smacks of poetry, and may
seem beyond the “voice” of a child, but in Greta’s case I believe it; the
author has done such a fine job of characterization, I’m assured that the observant
and mature-for-her-age main character would
respond to the land in this way.
The stories, all told in First Person, shed light on cultural
challenges, ie: Greta’s shame about her long, braided hair (her female
classmates sport short styles); her clothing (“dirndl skirts and aprons”; the other girls wear pants); and even
the torte her mother makes, which is so unlike the apple pie her friend Susie’s
mother serves. Greta emulates her classmates: “I practiced Susie’s laugh and
the way Janet tossed her head.” So realistic.
Greta’s father is the hired man for Mr. Bradley, and the immigrant
family is at the mercy of the Bradleys for everything from accommodation to fresh
chicken and Greta’s ride to school. The girl dreams of having her own room, and
short hair. Some wishes materialize: in this passage Greta considers her shorn
braid, which her mother’s stored in a dresser: “Sometimes I would take it out
and look at it by myself, this piece of hair that had once been a part of me.
How strange, I thought, it doesn’t look like it belongs to anyone or anything
now.”
Lovely writing, fresh insights. A book very much-enjoyed.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
_____
“Fritz Stehwien: A Retrospective”
Written by Barbara Stehwien
Published by Landscape Art Publishing
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$9.95 ISBN 9-780991-964918
The softcover book Fritz Stehwien: A Retrospective, originally
published in 1993 and later released with an updated biography, was a family
affair. The book-not unlike a gallery catalogue produced to accompany a major
artist’s show-is prefaced by introductions to the German-born artist’s life and
work by daughter Barbara Stehwien and daughter-in-law Nancy Robinson-Stehwien. What
follows is 20 attractive pages of black and white and colour images of the prolific
artist’s work, including landscapes, portraits, and still-lifes.
First, the man. In the introductions we learn that Stehwien was the
quintessential artist, always ready to capture the spirit of what was around
him, and as such he lived a full and interesting life. “I have not known him to
go anywhere without his materials,” his daughter writes, adding that if he
didn’t have everything that was required, he would “improvise using the back of
painted or printed matter, even restaurant napkins.” She says he would use “any
old pen rather than lose an important moment.”
The use of “moment” here lends a clue to the value the subject of this
book saw in those brief snatches of time, when perhaps the sun was only
momentarily striking the leaves of a tree and making them golden, or
brightening a distant field in a prairie scene, like he illustrated in his
painting “Old Farmyard, 1984”.
The author speaks of her father’s
vocation as “an inherent part” of him. “Even at family get-togethers he will
not rest.” This passion is reiterated by his daughter-in-law, Nancy, who writes
of the artist’s “zest for life,” the “unerring perspective evident in his
rendering of buildings and cityscapes,” and “his ability to see the subject of
a painting in something most of us would pass by without a second glance.”
Now, the work. Through his
spontaneous charcoal and pastel sketches;
his oil portraits; his pencil, pen, and
ink drawings; woodcuts; and his acrylics-indeed it seems he covered all the
media-I agree with his daughter that her father was a “versatile” and
highly-skilled artist. Apparently the “powers that be” at Saskatoon City Hall
believe the same, as Stehwien’s name has been added to the list of those who
will one day have a city park named after them.
I was particularly moved by the book’s front and back cover images. On
the front, “Autumn at the Lake,” an atmospheric acrylic painted in 1989; and on
the back, a Saskatoon winter scene, revealing children playing on a riverside
hill, the Bessborough Hotel rising proudly in the background. Lovely. I also
much enjoyed his precise pen and ink renderings in “Russian Peasants” (1942),
“Warsaw” (1944), and my favourite (perhaps because I know the subject so well),
“White Pelicans in Saskatoon” (1993). The latter made me homesick.
The book concludes with an impressive biography. Clearly Stehwien was as
generous as he was gifted: in his final year, 2008, several paintings were
donated to organizations, including the Saskatoon Symphony, Open Door Society,
Boys & Girl Club in Saskatoon, and to St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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